John Reith, 1st Baron Reith
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John Charles Walsham Reith, 1st Baron Reith KT GCVO GBE CB TD PC (20 July 1889–16 June 1971) was a Scottish broadcasting executive who established the tradition of independent public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom. He was the founder of the BBC.
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[edit] Early life
Born at Stonehaven, Kincardineshire, Reith was the youngest, by ten years, of the seven children of the Revd Dr George Reith, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He was to carry the strict Presbyterian religious convictions of the Free Church forward into his adult life. Reith was educated at the Glasgow Academy then at Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk. Reith was an indolent child who had used his intelligence to escape hard work but he was genuinely disappointed when his father refused to support any further education and apprenticed him an engineer at the North British Locomotive Company. Reith had been a keen sportsman at school and only learnt to tolerate his apprenticeship through part-time soldiering in the 1st Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers and 5th Scottish Rifles.
In 1914, Reith left Glasgow for London, largely in pursuit of a 17 year-old schoolboy, Charlie Bowser, on whom he appears to have formed something of a crush. Though he readily found work at the Royal Albert Dock, his commission in the 5th Scottish Rifles soon found him serving in World War I, being invalided out when struck in the cheek by a bullet in October 1915. He spent the next two years in the United States, supervising armament contracts, and became attracted to the country, fantasising of moving there with Bowser after the war.
On his return to the UK, Reith and Bowser both fell in love with Muriel Odhams. Reith won Muriel's hand but warned her that she must share me with C. He sought to redress the asymmetry by finding a partner for Bowser but Reith's subsequent jealousy interrupted the men's friendship, much to Reith's pain.
However, the end of the war saw a reconciliation, with Reith's return to Glasgow as General Manager of an engineering firm and Bowser becoming his assistant. But the lure of London proved too much for Reith and in 1922, he returned there. Dabbling in politics, despite his family's Liberal Party sympathies, he ended up working as secretary to the London Unionist group of MPs in the United Kingdom general election, 1922. Perhaps prophetically, this election's results were the first to be broadcast on the radio.
[edit] The BBC
On 14 December 1922 Reith became the general manager of the British Broadcasting Company, an organisation formed by manufacturers to provide broadcasts to foster demand for wireless sets. In his own words he was:
- ... confronted with problems of which I had no experience: Copyright and performing rights; Marconi patents; associations of concert artists, authors, playwrights, composers, music publishers, theatre managers, wireless manufacturers.
Reith oversaw the vesting of the company in a new organisation, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), formed under royal charter and became its first Director-General from 1 January 1927 to 30 June 1938.
He expounded firm principles of centralised, all-encompassing radio broadcasting, stressing programming standards and moral tone. When asked whether he was going to give the people what they wanted, Reith replied: "No. Something better than that." To this day, the BBC claims to follow the Reithian directive to "inform, educate and entertain".
In 1922 Reith felt that King George V should use the new medium of radio to speak to the nation as one family. The King declined as he felt that radio was still too experimental to be used for a royal message. The King was asked again in 1932 by which time the BBC has begun its overseas service and the King had the opportunity to talk to his subjects around the world. At 3:00pm on 25 December 1932, the King made the first broadcast live from Sandringham. Since then King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II have continued the tradition. Since 1957 the broadcast has also gone out on television.
In 1924, Reith approved a novel type of broadcast - a nightingale chorus. This was the idea of Beatrice Harrison, an accomplished cellist living in Surrey, England. In May 1923, Harrison was rehearsing on an outside bench when a nightingale broke into song and accompanied her throughout her practice. In 1924 while Harrison made her broadcasting debut with an Elgar piece it occurred to her that the nightingales would make an interesting addition. Reith was sceptical at first as he believed that the nightingales would be unlikely to perform. A rehearsal was tried and went well. The first nightingale chorus was broadcast on Saturday, May 19, 1924, fifteen minutes before the station went off the air. The summerhouse was filled with amplifiers, engineers were swarming in the undergrowth and Miss Harrison played pieces by Elgar and Dvorak in a ditch.
These concerts continued for the next twelve years and on one occasion featured a chorus of frogs. After Harrison moved house, the unaccompanied birds continued to be recorded and broadcast. In 1942, the recording was interrupted by a fleet of Lancaster bombers droning overhead, the first of the thousand bomber raids targeting Cologne. This particular recording was never broadcast but remains in the BBC archives.
In 1926, a General Strike broke out across Britain. When the value of broadcasting as a governmental and political instrument became apparent, Winston Churchill and others in the Government wanted to commandeer the organisation for the emergency. Reith refused to comply, maintaining the BBC's independence. He won the argument but made an enemy of Churchill for years to come. This enmity was enhanced when the BBC refused Churchill air time to outline his controversial views on Indian policy and rearmament during the 1930s.
Regardless of his personal disagreements with Churchill over editorial control during the General Strike, Reith regarded the BBC as a tool of the British Parliament and allowed the broadcasting of material unfavorable to the strikers. Workers’ representatives were not allowed to broadcast their side of the dispute and supporters of the strike would refer to the BBC as the 'British Falsehood Corporation'.
Reith introduced the BBC's Empire Service - later renamed the BBC's World Service - in 1932. He was less than enthusiastic about its launch as he declared 'I doubt that the Empire Service will be either very good or very interesting.'
Regardless of his opinion, Reith was correct when he remarked in the Inaugural Empire Service Broadcast: 'This occasion is as significant as any in the 10 years of British broadcasting. It is a significant occasion in the history of the British Empire; there must be few in any civilised country who have yet to realise that broadcasting is a development with which the future must reckon and reckon seriously.'
In 2002, the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, described the World Service as the greatest gift Britain had given the world in the twentieth century. Currently the World Service broadcasts in 43 languages to a worldwide audience of 160-170 million. Millions more listen on the internet.
[edit] BBC and television
The first regular television broadcasts (November 1936 to September 1939) started under Reith's stewardship, but this service initially ground to a halt at the outbreak of the Second World War. When the television service resumed in 1945 it was to be very different due to the impact of the war and Reith having long since departed.
Television broadcasting in Britain started in the late 1920's. The Scotsman John Logie Baird in 1926 enlisted the aid of Selfridges, London to sell his new 'Televisor'. Demonstrations began in the store in 1928 but no regular broadcasting service was available. The BBC's official line was that the pictures were unaccepatably poor (only 30 lines per screen) and that there was no likelihood of improvement. Unofficially the BBC were very interested and provided space for Baird to work from. In January 1935 the Selsdon Report commissioned by the British Parliament recommended that the BBC be entrusted with the development of television in Britain.
The new service had something of a rushed introduction. The Director of Radio Outside Broadcasting, Gerald Cock was appointed the BBC's Director of Television. His first task was to assemble a team of experts and then summon them to a meeting where a plan could be worked out. Cox chose Peter Bax a stage designer as studio manager, Cecil Madden, a playwright as programme organiser, Stephen Thomas, Douglas Bower and Harry Pringle as producers, Cecil Lewis, Bill Barbrooke a film cameraman, George Moore O'Farrell and Mary Adams. In front of camera was to be Leslie Mitchell and female announcers Jasmine Bligh and Elizabeth Cowell who were chosen from the thousands who had applied.
Cock assembled his staff and told them that since none of them knew a thing about television broadcasting they were given four months to study the new medium. The meeting came to a close and all returned to their respective offices.
As Madden returned to his the phone was ringing. It was Cock.
"Wash out everything I said."
"What?"
"We've been asked to provide television for Radiolympia."
"But - that's only ten days away!"
"That's right, old chap, you'd better get cracking!"
...
"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It is with great pleasure that I introduce you to the magic of television..."
With those words Leslie Mitchell on 26th August 1936 introduced Britain's first high-definition public television programme from Radiolympia.
[edit] Later life
After leaving the BBC in 1938, Reith became chairman of Imperial Airways. In 1940 he was appointed Minister of Information in the government of Neville Chamberlain. So as to perform his full duties he became a Member of Parliament for Southampton. When Chamberlain fell and Churchill became Prime Minister his long running feud with Reith led to the latter being moved to the Ministry of Transport. He was subsequently moved to become First Commissioner of Works which he held for the next two years, through two restructurings of the job, and was also transferred to the House of Lords becoming Baron Reith of Stonehaven.
During this period the town centers of Coventry, Plymouth and Portsmouth were destroyed by German bombing. Reith urged the local authorities to begin planning the post war reconstruction. He was dismissed from his government post by Churchill who stated that he found Reith difficult to work with.
He took a naval commission as a Lieutenant-Commander of the Royal Naval Voluntary Reserve (RNVR) on the staff of the Rear-Admiral Coastal Services. In 1943 was promoted to Captain (RNVR), and appointed Director of the Combined Operations Material Department at the Admiralty, a post he held until early 1945.
In 1946 he was appointed chairmanship of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Board - a post he held until 1950. He was then appointed chairman of the Colonial Development Corporation which he held until 1959. In 1948 he was also appointed the chairman of the National Film Finance Corporation, an office he held until 1951.
He also held directorships at the Phoenix Assurance Company, Tube Investments Ltd,the State Building Society (1960 - 1964) and was the vice-chairman of the British Oxygen Company (1964 - 1966). He was Lord Rector of Glasgow University (1965 - 1968). In 1967 he was appointed Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
The Independent Television Authority was created on July 30, 1954 ending the BBC's existing broadcasting monopoly. Lord Reith did not approve of its creation: "Somebody introduced Christianity into England and somebody introduced smallpox, bubonic plague and the Black Death. Somebody is minded now to introduce sponsored broadcasting ... Need we be ashamed of moral values, or of intellectual and ethical objectives? It is these that are here and now at stake."
In November 1955 Cable & Wireless moved from Electra House Embankment into its new headquarters in Theobalds Road, London. The building was named Mercury House after the Greek messenger of the gods and was officially opened by Lord Reith in December 1955.
In 1960 he returned to the BBC for an interview with John Freeman in the television series Face to Face.
He wrote two autobiographies: 'Into The Wind' in 1956 and 'Wearing Spurs' in 1966.
The BBC Reith Lectures instituted in 1948 commemorate Lord Reith.
[edit] Claim that Reith was a Nazi sympathiser
A biography, My Father — Reith of the BBC, written by his daughter Marista Leishman, was published on 29 September 2006. In it she claims that her father was a Nazi sympathiser who abhorred Jews. He banned the playing of jazz music on the BBC, and Leishman says that he wrote in his diary that "Germany has banned hot jazz and I’m sorry that we should be behind in dealing with this filthy product of modernity." Leishman says that on 9 March 1933 Reith wrote "I am certain that the Nazis will clean things up and put Germany on the way to being a real power in Europe again . . . They are being ruthless and most determined"; and in March 1939, when Prague was occupied, he wrote: "Hitler continues his magnificent efficiency."<ref>Lord Reith revered Hitler, says daughter, Sunday Times Scotland, 24 September 2006</ref>
[edit] Reference
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[edit] External links
| Media Offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by: (new office) | Director-General of the BBC 1927–1938 | Succeeded by: Sir Frederick Ogilvie |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by: Lord Macmillan | Minister of Information 1940 | Succeeded by: Alfred Duff Cooper |
| Preceded by: Euan Wallace | Minister of Transport 1940 | Succeeded by: John Moore-Brabazon |
| Preceded by: The Lord Tryon | First Commissioner of Works 1940 | Succeeded by: (office replaced) |
| Preceded by: (new office) | Minister of Works & Buildings and First Commissioner of Works 1940–1942 | Succeeded by: (office replaced) |
| Preceded by: (new office) | Minister of Works and Planning 1942 | Succeeded by: The Lord Portal |
| Peerage of the United Kingdom | ||
| Preceded by: New Creation | Baron Reith 1940–1971 | Succeeded by: Christopher Reith |
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